April 22, 2007

Is latent homosexuality a killer?

Posted by: Chris

One thing I learned from almost a decade in the gay press: Every big news story has a gay angle. It would drive some homos crazy that we reported on gays affected by Hurricane Katrina or every last homosexual impacted by the 9/11 attacks, but their stories are often lost in the media melee that inevitably follows huge news events.

The Virginia Tech massacre is no exception, so herewith are a few nuggets:

GayNgle: No. 1:  Was shooter Cho Seung Hui a latent homosexual, acting out his anger against his own same-sex urges?  So thinks quack shrink Helen Morrison, interviewed by (not-so-latent) glass-closet-case Anderson Cooper:

COOPER: Dr. Morrison, what do you make -- you know, in his writings, there seemed to be sort of an obsession with the debauchery, the hedonism of other people. He seemed to need to prove his masculinity a lot.

MORRISON: Well, one of the early theories about paranoia is that it's a defense against the person's own urges of homosexuality. And that's a very old theory.

But, if you look at the writings he had in both of his plays, they are focused on things occurring that would generally happen only in a same-sex-type relationship. But they're very threatening. And his response to those threats is to kill.

COOPER: But he seemed to be attracted to women.

MORRISON: Well, but, you know, it's like anything else. If you are trying to prove yourself, and trying to show that you're the complete opposite of what you might be afraid of, you will definitely stalk. You will definitely look into a woman's eyes and see promiscuity, which is one of the things he talked about.

But the focus on the sexuality of females was only masking what appears to have been a tremendous fear that he was not truly attracted to females.

H/t: G-A-Y

GayNgle: No. 2: There were gays among those killed in Cho's shooting rampage, reports Lou Chibbaro of the Washington Blade.  But the gay student leader on campus gets it right, when he says the tragedy is "not a gay thing; it's an everybody thing":

“Thirty-three people were killed,” said Curtis Dahn, president of the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual & Transgender Alliance of Virginia Tech. “Some were queer, and others were straight allies. The GLBT community at Tech grieves in the same way as others — deeply and as part of a greater whole.”

Dahn declined to disclose the number of gay or lesbian students killed or wounded in the incident, nor would he identify them, saying he and the gay alliance group wanted to wait until they were certain all families were notified about the loss of their loved ones.

“Yes, there were gay people that were killed,” he said. “One was a very close friend of mine. But I don’t feel comfortable talking about it because I haven’t talked to the families and I want to be respectful to the families, first and foremost."

Dahn also said he doesn't "want this to be a gay thing, because it’s not a gay thing,” he said. “It’s an everybody thing.”

GayNgle: No. 3: The good Rev. Fred Phelps, best known for his "God Hates Fags" signs and for picketing Matthew Shepard's funeral and those of soldiers killed in Iraq, plan to do the same at the funerals of some Virginia Tech shooting victims:

The organization, founded and led by Fred Phelps, believes the United States has condemned itself to destruction by accepting homosexuality and other “sins of the flesh.” Phelps’ daughter, Shirley Phelps-Roper, said the Virginia Tech teachers and students who died on Monday brought their fate upon themselves by not being true Christians.

“The evidence is they were not Christian. God does not do that to his servants,” Phelps-Roper said. “You don’t need to look any further for evidence those people are in hell.”

GayNgle: No. 3: POZ magazine founder Sean Strub sent an email highlighting the positive role played by Nicki Giovanni, an out lesbian professor at Virginia Tech who alerted school officials about Cho and helped rally and heal the campus after the shootings.  Writes Strub:

Over the past few days I have thought that the fact that it was an out African American lesbian who so dramatically inspired the mourners at the VA Tech all-campus memorial service had gotten insufficient press play.  She's also the one who recognized that Cho was seriously ill, complained about him to school administrators and refused to allow him to remain in her class.

Nikki's a legend and I've always thought her insufficiently honored by our own GLBT community.  And this was an occasion to which she rose with an elegance and strength that makes me really proud.  I've never met her, but I have admired her for years.

Then I went on the web and, to my surprise, I can't find any references to her as an out lesbian.  I guess that may explain why I might she's been insufficiently honored by the community.  I've always thought of her as being out, but I may be in error.  I understand she lives with her partner.  I have no idea whether she thinks she is out or not or how or if she identifies her sexual orientation. 

More about Giovanni at her website.  And I'll close with Prof. Giovanni's remarks at the Virginia Tech convocation honoring the dead:

We are Virginia Tech.

We are sad today, and we will be sad for quite a while. We are not moving on, we are embracing our mourning.

We are Virginia Tech.

We are strong enough to stand tall tearlessly, we are brave enough to bend to cry, and we are sad enough to know that we must laugh again.

We are Virginia Tech.

We do not understand this tragedy. We know we did nothing to deserve it, but neither does a child in Africa dying of AIDS, neither do the invisible children walking the night away to avoid being captured by the rogue army, neither does the baby elephant watching his community being devastated for ivory, neither does the Mexican child looking for fresh water, neither does the Appalachian infant killed in the middle of the night in his crib in the home his father built with his own hands being run over by a boulder because the land was destabilized. No one deserves a tragedy.

We are Virginia Tech.

The Hokie Nation embraces our own and reaches out with open heart and hands to those who offer their hearts and minds. We are strong, and brave, and innocent, and unafraid. We are better than we think and not quite what we want to be. We are alive to the imaginations and the possibilities. We will continue to invent the future through our blood and tears and through all our sadness.

We are the Hokies.

We will prevail.

We will prevail.

We will prevail.

We are Virginia Tech.

Tags: Cho Seung Hui, gay, Virginia Tech